Musings on the Social Aspects of My “Home” States
I spent the first twelve years of my life in Nashua, New Hampshire. We then spent six months in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania before moving to Oil City in the western part of the state. By the time I graduated, I had lived in four cities and eight domiciles. When I was eighteen, I moved to San Francisco, and in that year I lived there, it became home. I then spent a year in Guam followed by another year in the Bay Area. There were four or five years in San Diego. Four glorious all too short months in DC. Three-ish years in Jacksonville, Florida. Twelve-ish years in Orlando. (As I got older and more absorbed in my career, time became time-ish.) Then I moved back to the Bay Area for a year-ish to start my life with the man I love only to relocated to Houston. That was two years ago this week.
If you pressed me on where I grew up, I might say Nashua or Oil City or, if I am feeling especially introspective, I might go with California. Until two years ago, if you asked me where I am from, I would need time to consider the answer. I might have answered Florida since I lived there the longest and I have the most friends there. It was more likely that I would have said “Nowhere and everywhere.” If home is where the heart is, none of these locations truly qualified. However, asked the same question today, odds are I’d say I’m from Texas because Houston feels like home.
It was a recent realization. With uncertainty in Eric's workplace and my applications to doctoral programs, Eric and I were suddenly faced with the possibility of leaving Houston. The more we discussed opportunities, the more morose we became. How could that be? We love new places and new people! We love adventures! One night as we laid in bed, I finally put it into words this alien feeling, “I don’t want to leave Houston. I love it here. It’s home.” I’m not sure precisely when that happened, but I do know why Houston won me over.
Houston has the best people.
Bold declaration, I suppose, and one no doubt my friends in other parts of the country will take issue. (I still love you and you are awesome.) Although I lived in Florida the longest, it always felt the most fleeting. If you weren’t from Florida, you seemed to be plotting to leave it. It’s a transient state. Orlando is a waypoint to creative meccas like New York City and Los Angeles and Royal Caribbean. With few exceptions, everyone under the age of 40 talks about where they will move. The people I met are amazing and far more interesting than one would think they’d find in an amusement park city. But people waltzed (sometimes literally) into and out of your life. It is hard to consider any place home when social connections are often tenuous at best. Tell anyone how much you love living in Orlando, and you are met with a quizzical “Really?”
San Francisco had that home feeling when I first lived there. There seemed to be a collective appreciation for just being there. If you said something about how incredible the City and the surrounding area are, others would get starry eyed as they responded with an “It is, isn’t it?” It was still too expensive to live but it could be manageable with roommates in the right area. Three of my friends from my time at Supershuttle shared a flat in the Sunset. On Supershuttle salaries. It was kind of a hole in the wall, but they got to live in the City. That was pretty damn spiffy. That hippie dippy reputation was well earned back then. Participation in the arts and social activism was sincere.
When I returned to the area this last time, it had changed. The City was still incredibly beautiful with nearly perfect weather. But the hippie dippiness had all but vanished. What once felt random and organic, now feels structured and forced. People live to work. The gulf between the haves and have nots has increased exponentially. If you are in technology, everyone you meet has a start up. Hell, even their hobbies are regimented. They seem to compete to see who has the weirdest hobbies. Actually, they seem to compete on everything. Something that should just be a fun relaxed time, like Dicken’s Faire, turns into a status symbol. People talk about how much they have paid for their outfit and how they spent time learning period dialect. They spend months planning and executing their Burning Man projects. They are so pressed for time, that a friend was once told after striking up a conversation with someone at a party, “Are you trying to be my friend? Because I have enough friends.” If you talk about how amazing the City is, you hear “Well, of course it is.” with an implied “Aren’t you lucky you live here?”
To be sure, not everyone there is that tightly wound. You can still find pockets of wonderful people. For me, those people tended to be Florida transplants. Yet even the awesome people tended to be too busy working crazy hours. Or they lived just far enough away that visiting required massive planning. It was life as a Gantt chart.
Houston is the only city I have lived where you can make new friends anywhere. Sure, you meet more people at work, school, and in social organizations. But here, you can fall into an hour long conversation at the park. You can introduce yourself to another couple at a show and end up making plans to meet again for dinner. If you tell someone how much you love Houston, the response is “Surprising right? We love it here too and are so glad people like you are moving here!” You feel welcome.
It’s a work intensive city. As such, they seem to view recreation as something precious, fun, relaxed, organic. When someone talks about hobbies or interests, they are genuinely excited. Eric was amazed when we went to a kite festival and found a lot of store bought kites. We complimented someone on their custom kite and they talked about what they did and how much fun it was. He observed that had this been San Francisco, the kite flyer would have had a story about how he had spent a year learning the fine art of kite making from a Chinese monk who only accepts two or three students a year.
Of course, there are phenomenal people in every city, and, obviously, every city has its share of pretentious assholes. But the social culture in Houston is hard to beat. In a few years, we may find our wanderlust kicks in again and we decide it’s time to try another city. Still, Houston will be difficult to leave.
